


Katniss Everdeen and the Veil of Shadows

by papofglencoe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Magic, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, POV Alternating, POV Katniss Everdeen, POV Peeta Mellark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 07:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11732361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papofglencoe/pseuds/papofglencoe
Summary: “Are you,” the disembodied voice moaned lowly, its tone shaking her guts, rattling her lungs, robbing her of air, cleaving her heart into halves. “Are you coming to the tree?”





	Katniss Everdeen and the Veil of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> The Hunger Games/Harry Potter crossover. AU Everlark/HP canon divergent. Takes place several decades after the events of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows but has absolutely nothing to do with anything that happens in Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. 
> 
> I do not own The Hunger Games or Harry Potter. (Unfortunately.) Contains direct, revised, and repurposed quotes from The Hunger Games books and films. 
> 
> Rated E for explicit language, minor character deaths, disturbing imagery, and sexual content. 
> 
> With thanks, as always, to my betas: @dandelion-sunset, @eala-musing, @everlylark, and @jennagill. I’ve attempted to adhere to British spelling standards, but, being American, will surely fail from time to time. These and all other mistakes are mine. 
> 
> For @thegreatorangedragon.

 

_Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,_

_Who battled for the True, the Just,_

_Be blown about the desert dust,_

_Or seal'd within the iron hills?_

 

_No more? A monster then, a dream,_

_A discord. Dragons of the prime,_

_That tare each other in their slime,_

_Were mellow music match'd with him._

 

_O life as futile, then, as frail!_

_O for thy voice to soothe and bless!_

_What hope of answer, or redress?_

_Behind the veil, behind the veil._

 

_-from “In Memoriam,” Tennyson_

* * *

 

The candle resting atop the pocked mahogany desk guttered, its feeble flame hissing as it met a sudden and unceremonial demise. It was the sixth time in as many minutes that a passing draught had extinguished the flame, and, plunged into darkness yet again, the witch who had been attempting to read by it sighed impatiently.

“ _Lumos_ ,” she grumbled under her breath, watching the letters of the charm curl away from her in the frosty air by the light of her wand. (Twelve inches of mahogany, with a phoenix feather core, the wood as unyielding as the witch who now held it and as scarred and battered as the desk in front of her).

But it was pointless.

Her office in the Astronomy Tower—with its ancient, cracked stones held together by crumbling mortar—was freezing. Whenever the east wind blew, the room became an ice cave, colder and darker and more haunted than the deepest reaches of the Great Lake. There was no spell or charm that could rid the tower of the pervasive chill that insisted on seeping into it, settling its way into the bones of anyone unfortunate enough to have to linger there for long. Even with a thick Himalayan Yeti wool blanket draped across her lap, she couldn’t stop shudders from wracking her body, rattling her slender frame so hard her teeth clacked in her skull.

So be it.

With frozen fingers, she snapped shut her well-worn copy of _Potter’s Progress: The Reformation of the Auror Department In The Aftermath of The Second Wizarding War_. In lieu of a history lesson tomorrow, her second years were going to have to contend with Cornish pixies again. (Probably not a bad idea, given that the last class had ended with Rue Thomas clinging to the dragon skeleton that was suspended from the ceiling of her classroom to escape the clutches of an especially toothy one).

No, the syllabus be damned: no matter how much she loved her job or how badly she wanted to inspire the children to follow in her footsteps, the reality was that if she didn’t get out of her icebox of an office and find a way to shake the cold out of her bones, she was in serious jeopardy of transfiguring into an icecube.

There were a few ways one could find a little warmth in this world—her personal favourite being one she hadn’t had the opportunity to enjoy since taking the position earlier in the year as Hogwarts’ new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. This was due in equal parts to the fact that there was a woeful shortage of potential sexual partners among the school’s revered and rather… _elderly_ staff and that, even if there had been a plethora of willing and available partners, her personality was generally considered to be as appealing to the opposite sex as a Hungarian Horntail’s. If a tendency to spit fire when provoked meant a dragon didn’t often get fucked with, then the same was equally true for her.

That left her with alcohol—and a warm fire to drink it by—to chase away the chill. To the nearby village of Hogsmeade it was, then. An empty barstool at the Three Broomsticks Inn was calling to her, a siren song she no longer cared to ignore.

She pointed her wand at the candle. “ _Incendio_.”

It whooshed back to life in response, flickering happily as though it had every intention of remaining lit.

“Now do as you’re told for one bleeding minute,” she griped to the flame.

It crackled in umbrage at the sharpness in her tone, looking more than a little put out.

Rising from the rickety wooden chair and stretching her stiff limbs, she slipped on her robe and stowed her wand inside it, then grabbed her scarf from the coat rack beside the door, winding the scarlet-and-gold striped garment around her throat so many times the wool covered her entire face, save for her eyes. If it was cold inside the castle, she was at serious risk of freezing her tits off outside.

She surveyed the room once before stepping through the heavy oak door, shooting a scornful glance at the candle. “Let’s not pretend you need any help from me,” she told it.

The flame flickered in response, then went out, pitching the room back into darkness.

Making her way through the castle corridors, the witch walked with a featherlight tread, sticking to the shadows to avoid running into any colleagues who might be lingering about looking to chat with someone to wile away the drowsy evening hours. She supposed she was fond enough of them (as fond as anyone could be about the people they had to work with), but she’d never been one for making small talk, of saying something— _anything_ —of worth. Truth be told, she’d rather wrestle with a troll or go for a walk alone through the Forbidden Forest than spend an evening trying to come up with something to say about Professor Undersee’s flowering shrivelfig tree. And that had nothing really to do with him, she conceded, and everything to do with herself.

She sighed in relief when she made it to the entrance to the secret tunnel leading to Hogsmeade, having encountered neither a living nor a dead soul along the way. Even the usually watchful eyes of the portraits were closed, the painted figures slumbering away the hours of the endless winter storm. A statue of a hideously hunchbacked witch stood in front of the otherwise nondescript stone wall, like an exhausted sentry passed out over a bowl of gruel.

“ _Dissendium_ ,” she whispered to the statue with a tap of her wand, watching as its deformed back swung open. A slide led down to the dark tunnel below, and she lowered herself to the floor and swiftly descended, beginning the long, lonely trek to Hogsmeade.

The Passage of the One-Eyed Witch was one of the worst-kept secrets at Hogwarts—it had been extensively renovated after its collapse during the war, with construction crews of house elves advertising its whereabouts to the next generation of curious students—and she’d taken the path across the hard-packed dirt so many times during her years as a student that she could practically walk it now in the dark.

But that made it seem so much lonelier somehow, heading into Hogsmeade without friends or companions to keep her company. So she kept the light of her wand trained ahead of her to dispel the darkness of her thoughts—the same as she did when she was a friendless child.

The same as she always would.

* * *

“Are you sure you’re all right locking up for the night?” The wizard ran a hand through his hair, only noticing after the fact that he’d forgotten to wash the colored frosting off his fingers first.

Anisha Crasta, the young woman he’d hired to help out in the shop for the holidays, giggled as she took in the sight of his messy blond hair now streaked (he could only imagine how badly) with blue sugar. “Yes, I’ll be fine,” she crowed, flapping her hands at him to shoo him towards the door. “Go! I promise not to burn the place down, and if I have any questions I’ll send Buttercup as my emissary to claw at you for help.”

The tomcat who was lounging by the front door of the bakery mewled his agreement, his ugly, smashed-in face looking out murderously through the glass at the newborn Salopian Snowbirds as they floated down, pinwheeling and spinning, from the navy-coloured sky. Lazy, overfed, and miserably sick with cabin fever, the cat was all too eager to taste one of them as they drifted to the ground and frolicked there, obliviously chittering and bouncing about upon their spindly, undersized legs. There was nothing altruistic about the cat’s assent—he’d probably agree to trekking through the bleakest arctic tundra just to have a moment’s chance at one of the birds. (Little did he know, they were made of tears, nothing more than frozen saltwater brought to life by some witch or wizard's long-forgotten charm).

“All right.” The man wiped his hands on his apron and looked around the bakery, huffing out an anxious breath at the sight of the counters still littered with baking sheets and piping bags, self-stirring mixing bowls and gingerbread men strolling casually across the counters whilst edible butterflies flitted over their sugared heads.

The place was a wreck. But he could do this—leave Anisha to tend the shop. It would be okay. He repeated the words to himself until he half-believed them, the mantra he’d repeated so often the words had grown threadbare: _everything will be okay_. After all this time, though, it was still hard not to panic, not to worry that something might go wrong, that someone might...

Anisha’s expression grew softer, her amusement vanishing as she noticed how hard he was struggling to stay calm and not to allow his anxiety to spiral into something worse, the way it sometimes did when he’d grab the edge of the counter and squeeze his eyes shut, muttering under his breath until the thoughts plaguing him crawled back into the murk and morass of whatever dark corner of his mind had conjured them in the first place.

“Peeta, I’ve got it. I promise,” she said, her words made even gentler by the cadence of her Goan accent. “You work harder than anyone I know. Go. Enjoy dinner with your friend.”

She finished counting the cash in the till, speaking the amount aloud as she plunked the last of the coins back into the heavy wooden drawer. Next to her, her quill followed along by itself, tallying the exact amounts of coins and bills onto the curled and foxed pages of an ancient, leather-bound ledger. “See?” She slipped the till into the safe beneath the counter. “I’ve already handled the books. All that’s left for me to do is put the pastries to basket and clean a few dishes,” she waved her wand in the direction of the kitchen, where the faucet noisily sputtered to life, “and lock a couple doors.” She looked over at him, her emerald green eyes as sad as they were sincere. “This isn’t London, Peeta. It’s _Hogsmeade_. Nothing ever happens here. It’ll be okay.”

“Right.” He gave her a shaky smile and nodded his head with more conviction than he felt. Maybe it would never be easy for him, letting go after what had happened in London. But he had to try. “It’ll be okay,” he said, mostly for his own benefit. “Thanks, Ani.”

Trading his apron for a well-worn corduroy coat, he headed for the door before he could convince himself to stay with her. Maybe nowhere was as safe as it seemed, not even a tiny village tucked away from the rest of the world…

Before he could finish this thought, he forced himself to step outside and into the night. The wind had been whistling for hours, the snow billowing in eddies and drifts until the ancient buildings of the village looked like crooked teeth tottering and jutting every which way. Carefully, he trudged through the snow, using the light from the garland-wrapped lampposts and pooling from the pub’s frosted windows to guide him to the Three Broomsticks.

He was thinking about the cake he’d been commissioned to make by Headmaster Granger-Weasley for the school’s upcoming Yule Ball when he saw her walking towards him—the fiercely beautiful witch he’d spotted last week through the bakery window, walking alone across the village green. Her hair was the same raven black as her wizarding robe, the starkness of the colour offset by the tone of her skin—so rich and warm it reminded him of how it felt to bask as a child in the sunbaked grass of the Downs on a lazy summer’s day, the invisible hands of the breeze ruffling through his hair as it made its way in from the Channel. Even now, on a gusty winter evening, the sight of her warmed his blood like a softly exhaled incantation.

Beautiful.

She was maybe the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. So beyond beautiful the word was an insult and discredit to her.

She was familiar somehow, too, like he knew her from somewhere, although she hadn’t been in his year in school—or anywhere close to it. Judging from appearances, she had to be at least a handful of years younger than he was. So not likely from his days at Hogwarts, then. Perhaps their paths had crossed in London. It’s not like he’d been actively looking at the time, but a face like hers… you wouldn’t forget a face like that.

Tonight the witch’s face was almost completely obscured by her scarf, which was knitted with the colours of Gryffindor (answering at least a few of the questions he had about her). She kept her eyes cast downward to watch her step in the tall snowdrifts, her thick, dark lashes concealing the colour of her eyes from him.

As the wind howled and shrieked through the narrow wynds between the buildings, he stood there unnoticed, frozen in awe, silently observing her. Her cheeks were chapped a bright pink from the cold, and her hair and shoulders were peppered with snowflakes. She looked positively bewitching—more deserving of the title than any other woman he’d ever met before. He choked back the guilt that rose like bile to the back of his throat at the thought, his heart speeding up as she opened the door to the Three Broomsticks and disappeared inside.

And like that, his objective for the evening magically changed. He’d been looking forward to catching up with Finnick, hearing about his friends’ travels in Patagonia and his efforts to rehabilitate the population of Chilean Chardragons.

But now?

All he wanted was to know her name.

...Or at least to start with that.

* * *

Her boots had soaked through long before she reached the stone steps at the end of the dank tunnel to Hogsmeade, and by the time she passed through the village and reached the wood-hewn door of the half-timbered inn—one that Muggles would describe as a “Tudor” but that those in the wizarding world would say was built during the goblin uprisings—she was so frozen she could no longer feel anything below her knees.

Eagerly, she walked through the door and stomped the snow off her boots, the wind that sneaked in behind her whistling as the heavy door swung closed at her back. There was no need for her eyes to adjust to the light of the pub—it was as moody and dark as the night outside, the shadows and smoke in the room dispelled only by the candles that were scattered about in sooty glass bottles and by the roaring fire that crackled in a massive stone hearth at the far end of the room. Several sets of dangerously crooked and derelict staircases led sideways and backwards and upwards to the crowded balcony overhead, whilst others wound in spirals up to the rafters and onward to nowhere at all. But instead of making her way toward one of those, she headed directly over to the crowded bar, where she saw someone familiar perched upon a barstool, his haunches hanging precariously over the sides of the stool as he swayed to look down at her.

“Well, lookie what the cat dragged in. If it ain’t Professor Everdeen. And—” the man looked at the empty space next to her, squinting as if to see more clearly through the hazy gloom of the pub, "her twin sister."

His voice was like gravel pouring into someone’s ears—dirty and rasping and irritatingly close, a grating and fractured mess of disparate pieces that didn’t belong.

“Haymitch,” the very much _un-twinned_ witch said by way of greeting, lifting herself onto the only available barstool, which unfortunately happened to be the one next to him. Unwinding her scarf, she wadded it up to wipe off the water rings left on the bar top in front of her, awkwardly busying herself so she wouldn’t have to make conversation.

Not that she was in any position to judge, but the man reeked of alcohol. And a barnyard too, come to think of it, although—as Hogwarts’ gamekeeper—the latter was more easily excused.

“What brings you to this fine establishment on a Tuesday evening—it is Tuesday, ain’t it?” He scratched at the wisps of black hair combed over the wide, bald expanse of his skull, then belched loudly, obviously past caring whether it was a school night or not.

The wizard on the other side of her, an ebony-skinned man with eyes the same amber colour as the liquid in the shot glass he clutched in his right—and only—hand, chortled appreciatively at the sound, toasting his friend before downing the liquid in one greedy gulp.

Haymitch Abernathy, reputed to be the most incorrigible drunkard in all of Scotland, had secured the job as gamekeeper through his longstanding friendship with his predecessor, Rubeus Hagrid, who'd passed away suddenly when the aforementioned Professor Everdeen had been no more than a young witch at Hogwarts. Hagrid had been a notorious collector and rescuer of broken, wild things—Haymitch being the most broken and wild of all of them—and so it had come as little surprise to anyone when the headmaster asked him to stay on and continue the work of his partner.

It _had_ come as a surprise, however, when he'd managed not only to do the job, but to do it spectacularly well. The man was a bastard and a drunkard, but he certainly understood the workings and complexities of feral, untameable things.

...Which is perhaps why Hogwarts’ new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was secretly predisposed to liking him, as odious as the gamekeeper could be. Haymitch understood that, in people, something wild and vicious lurked beneath the veneer of civility, and it wasn’t necessarily something to be abhorred and feared, domesticated and cultivated into niceties and good manners. Haymitch saw what was savage, and respected it for its honesty and power.

So, although he’d never seemed to like her very much, she felt he _respected_ her. And, in seeing her for who she was, she felt a little less... adrift.

"I'm here for the same reason you are," she said. She took in the collection of empty shot and pint glasses he'd amassed in front of him throughout the course of the evening. There had to be at least two dozen of them. "Sort of," she amended.

"Well, here's some _professorial_ advice for you, sweetheart." He pointed to one of the glasses in front of him—or tried to, anyway—his index finger uselessly poking at the air next to it. "Liquor before beer, you're in the clear. And beer before liquor… aw fuckit—” He scrubbed his hands over his face in aggravation, his knuckles as red and chapped as the tip of his nose. “What was I saying?”

"Right. Incredibly helpful." She leant her elbows on the counter and looked down towards the bartender, lifting a finger to snag the woman's attention. She wondered which would happen first—if Haymitch would lose interest in conversation with her or pass out, face-first on the counter. Each seemed equally probable.

The bartender, a dangerously chesty, pea green-skinned woman named Octavia, grinned broadly as she approached, a shot glass and bottle of firewhisky already in her hands.

"How are ye dain t’night?" the bartender asked, pouring two fingers of liquor for the witch in front of her. Octavia didn't wait for a reply before bubbling on like an overheated cauldron, "It's awfy cauld out there. With the wind blowin' and the snow fallin' in heaps an’ heaps, it feels like the dungeons of Azkaban, it does."

"Tell me about it," the raven-haired witch grumbled, downing the scorching liquid in a single gulp. She nudged the glass back towards the woman. "I'll have another. Please." She could already feel the liquor coursing down her oesophagus, warming her, bringing her insides up to a comfortable simmer. One more ought to do the trick. Or two, tops.

“Well, if the snow gets too deep and you’re in no mood for trudgin’ back tae the castle, you’re more than welcome tae stay the night here. We still hae plenty a’ rooms available, includin’ a couple a’ singles. You’ll no hae tae share with a bampot like Haymitch.” Octavia winked at the gamekeeper and poured another shot for the both of them before ambling down the crowded bar to check in on the other patrons.

Taking her second shot of liquor, the witch winced and looked around the room at the others who'd made their way through the snowstorm and into the pub. Aside from the men on each side of her—and really, the two ought to be sitting next to each other—everyone had someone else. The room was filled with laughter and conversation and music, and a drunken half-giant was singing an old Muggle tune, "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," as he leaned one massive hand on the piano in the corner, bellowing the words down to the pianist accompanying him.

She was the only person here with no one at all.

She was about to turn back around and order a third shot—something, anything to chase off the melancholy seizing her—when her eyes made their way to the far corner of the room. Through the smoke, tucked away in a dark corner of the balcony, she'd almost missed him.

Abruptly, she whipped her head away, not wanting to get caught staring, and looked at him instead through the reflection of the mirror above the bar.

He'd caught her once before, years ago. Staring.

Peeta Mellark.

She'd never been in love before. Not really. She'd slept with men and fucked with men. She'd toyed with them, too, and allowed herself to be toyed with. But the burning feeling she got in her stomach, the tingling in her limbs, the heat that pooled to the place at the meeting of her thighs at the mere sight of him—those feelings had nothing to do with the whisky, and nothing even to do with want.

It was _need_.

She'd felt it the first time she saw him, when she was nothing more than a nervous eleven year old, her knobby knees trembling at the thought of what the Sorting Hat would tell her on her first night at Hogwarts.

 _Hufflepuff_ , she’d whispered under her breath as the headmaster gently placed the hat on her, careful not to crush the braids her mother had pinned up for her before putting her on the train to school. Beneath the floating candles of the Great Hall, seated at the table of the House she suddenly, inexplicably, wanted to join, the boy’s wavy hair looked like strands of finely spun gold, catching the light. Catching her eye. Catching something inside her she could not get back—the first boy to catch and keep it.

 _Hufflepuff_ , she’d prayed, watching as the boy laughed and smiled at some private joke he shared with his friends. They were older, much older—fifth years, as it turned out—but despite the fact that they were laughing, she could tell there was nothing mean in it, nothing sharp or cruel. Whatever they were laughing about, no one was the butt of their joke. She wanted to be part of that too, to be a part of them, of something warm and good.

 _Hufflepuff_ , she’d begged as the boy’s eyes met hers and then flitted carelessly away. He ripped into the heel of bread he’d been holding and jammed a chunk into his mouth, talking with his friends as he chewed, apathetic to the ceremony taking place and oblivious to the girl quaking in her shoes before him.

The Sorting Hat assigned her to Gryffindor.

It made no sense. She’d never felt less brave in her life, staring across the hall at that boy.

A simple and innocent crush, maybe, in the beginning. That’s all it had been. Nothing more than what any other girl might feel about a cute boy she'd never spoken to, the dawning understanding which came along with puberty that what she wanted was somehow coded and tied to the DNA of another person, even if she hadn’t known at the time what the mechanics of desire were.

Over time the feelings had changed. Peeta’s name became what she mouthed to the ceiling, mawing mindlessly into the night like a fish out of water as she silently worked herself with her hand, trying not to squirm her hips or make the mattress of her dormitory bed squeak as she imagined it was his finger working its way inside her.

Attraction.

 _That’s all it was_ , she had told herself, and while she’d been attracted to many others since then, what she’d felt for him had not only never gone away, it had apparently never been eclipsed by anyone else either. Because sitting here, glancing surreptitiously at his reflection in the mottled, mercury-stained looking glass of the bar, she couldn’t remember what it was to want for anything else except him. The golden boy she’d never touched.

It wasn't love. She knew that. You couldn’t love a person you’d never spoken to, who didn’t even know your name. No. It was an animal need, the desire to chase away the coldness in her body—the coldness on the other side of her bed. It wasn’t love. It was a gnawing, painful reminder that she wanted to feel something with someone, if only for a moment and even if it hurt.

That’s all it was. Nothing more.

* * *

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Peet. Have you listened to a single bloody thing I’ve said all night?”

Grabbing his pint glass, Finnick knocked back the dregs of his stout, the light of the candle on the tabletop gleaming off the pink ribbons of scar tissue that covered the back of his hands and wound their way up his arms in long, flame-shaped tendrils. “Here I am, regaling you with my most heroic and harrowing tales,” he pushed his sleeves impossibly higher up his muscled forearms as if to demonstrate how truly heroic he was, “and you keep looking at—” He leant forward, slinging an arm over the low wooden railing of the balcony, his shrewd green eyes scouting the room below to see what—or who—kept catching Peeta’s attention. When he noticed the petite witch hunched over the bar, his eyes widened in surprise. “Wait, have you been checking out _that bird_ all night? No fuckin’ way, mate. I take it back. This is a far more interesting story.”

Peeta’s face flushed pink at the knowing, self-satisfied grin Finnick shot him. He ought to have known his friend would suss him out, and, if anything, he should be surprised it took him the better part of two hours to do it.

But as to whether or not he should confide in him about the witch who had caught his eye, there was no question about it. The only way Peeta would hand-deliver information like that to Finnick Odair would be if his friend put him under the Imperius Curse (he sort of wouldn’t put it past him to try). Finnick wasn’t just legendary for wrangling dragons—he was also known for relentlessly teasing his friends with their secrets, and for pitilessly taking down his enemies with them too.

Not for nothing had the guy been sorted into Slytherin.

So, putting on the blandest expression he could manage, he shrugged and tried to pass it off. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Bollocks,” Finnick laughed, smacking the table with his palms so emphatically the beer in Peeta’s mostly untouched drink sloshed over the rim of the glass.

“No, really. I’ve been hanging on every last word. Especially your story about the ah...”

Peeta cleared his throat as his brain scrambled to recall what exactly Finnick had been talking about. There’d been some story about a witch in Caracas… or had it been Córdoba?... who’d transfigured into... a cat?... to try to entice him into cuddling after sex. And then there’d been something about falling into a den of some lizard... mutt... _things_ … and nearly being shredded to pieces in the sewers of… where was it? Rio de Janeiro?

Christ, he had no idea.

Inadvertently, his eyes darted over his friend’s shoulder, searching for the witch at the bar. _Wait, was she leaving?_ He leant forward, his shoulders tightening, mirroring the posture of the witch down below, but he relaxed as he noticed that instead of closing out her tab, Octavia was pouring her another drink. A draught this time—butterbeer. Which meant she’d be there a while yet.

 _Good_.

“And ah…” he mumbled, trying to pick up the thread of his frayed thoughts, “particularly that one bit about the um...”

But it was no use. The harder he tried to recollect whatever sexual exploit gone awry or catastrophic run-in with a reptile Finn had been talking about, the more apparent it became that tonight he was all eyes for the woman at the bar and absolutely senseless to everyone else.

Peeta ignored his friend’s knowing laughter and decided that, while playing dumb may not have worked on him, flattering his outsized ego usually did. “I’ve been captivated—enthralled, really—by your… ah… wit, which is… um… unparalleled in the… ah…” He chanced one more quick look at the witch as she dragged a finger listlessly across the bar top. _Should he try to talk to her? No. He’d have no clue what to say without coming across as smarmy or desperate or just plain sad. But damn if he didn’t want to anyway._

“...in the, ah, whole of human history,” he finished, well aware he’d overshot his mark.

“Well, yes. That’s true,” Finnick snickered. “And normally I wouldn’t disagree with you, but tonight I’m calling bullshit.” He shot a pointed look over his shoulder at the witch down below. “Because you, my friend, are checking out a girl. And not just any girl.” A crooked grin came upon his face, the expression half-feline, half-reptile, and one hundred percent unctuous. “But the one and only Katniss Everdeen. You poor bastard.”

It was like a Dementor had just passed over Peeta’s grave, sucking whatever vestiges of happiness and life were left in his bones. “How do you know her name?” he asked, pretty sure he didn’t want to know the answer.

The wizarding world was a small one, in which everyone seemed to be within a few degrees of having fucked his best friend. And that’s not something that normally bothered him. But for her… for _Katniss_...

He took a healthy swig of his beer, the taste of it so much less bitter than the direction of his thoughts.

“No, it ain’t like that with me and her,” his friend laughed, shaking his head and looking as though there were something preposterous about the mere thought of it. “But you mean to tell me you don’t know who she is?” He stood abruptly, pushing back the heavy bench he’d been sitting on, and swiped Peeta’s beer from the table.

The group of middle-aged witches seated beside them tittered and squirmed in their chairs as Finn tipped his head back, polishing off the drink in three large gulps. One of the witches gripped her throat, her eyes bulging and face reddening as if she’d just swallowed her own tongue.

Peeta knew the feeling, if for entirely different reasons. A sense of foreboding hung thick in the air along with the smoke from the woodfire—so tangible he felt he could reach out and touch it, so palpable it had its own scent. As it turned out, foreboding smelled a lot like stale beer and tobacco.

“Where are you going?”

“ _We_.” Finnick smacked his lips and wiped them off with the back of his hand. “I think you mean ‘where are _we_ going?’” He held up Peeta’s empty glass. “And isn’t it obvious? It’s time to grab another round.” He sauntered to the top of the stairs, calling back over his shoulder, “And for you to become acquainted with the always charming Miss Everdeen.”

Jealousy. Mortification. Dread. Terror. Panic. Peeta’s world narrowed to these sensations, tiny stars of light exploding and flickering at the edges of his vision as his heart hammered in his chest. There was no telling what his friend would say to her or how badly this would end for him. But it would end badly, of that he was certain.

“Finn, c’mon. No.” He hoofed it to the top of the stairs, gripping Finnick’s arm to stop him before he made an absolute clusterfuck of everything.

A couple hours ago, he thought he knew what he wanted. He thought he had the guts to just go up and talk to her. But when faced with the reality of it, he realized he wasn’t ready. He might _never_ be ready.

Only now had he allowed himself to finally look at another woman—to see there might still be some beauty in this world, something worth wanting. But it didn’t mean he had a right to it. He’d already had that chance.

Maybe it was best if he remained content only to look—and to dream. Dreaming never hurt anyone. Right?

“Let’s order another round for ourselves but leave it at that, all right?” he pleaded.

“Fuck that,” Finnick sighed, lightly shaking Peeta’s hand off. “It’s been what… three years? Four?”

“Three.” He stopped to think of exactly how long it had been. Why couldn’t he remember? He used to know, down to the number of weeks and days, even down to the hours. “Three years and…” He did the math once again to be sure, “Eight months.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Finnick’s face became uncharacteristically solemn, his mouth set into a line so serious on him it almost had the opposite effect of looking wildly hilarious, like a frowning sloth. “Look, I don’t mean to sound like an asshole. But it’s been a long time, Peet. A long fucking time. It’s time— _past_ time to get back out there.”

“I don’t know. I—”

“Can I be brutally honest with you for a second?”

Peeta’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”

Finnick huffed out a laugh. “No, that was me being all compassionate and understanding and... girly and shit.”

“Well, okay—”

“So look... I ain’t telling you to get your dick wet tonight.”

Peeta winced at the expression, although he supposed he’d heard far worse out of his friend’s mouth in the past hour alone.

“All I’m saying,” Finnick continued, “is that you should chat her up. The worst thing that can happen is that you look like a total ass.”

“Right.” Peeta’s mouth went dry at the thought. “That’s reassuring.”

“...That or she eats you alive.” Finnick laughed and began to gallop down the stairs, oblivious to the fact that each crooked step could lead to his sudden and precipitous demise.

And it was that—the way his friend rushed headlong down the ramshackle steps, confident and unafraid—that inspired Peeta to follow him down.

Down to something, if possibly his doom.

* * *

No sooner had the one-armed wizard beside her abandoned his perch on his barstool and stumbled out into the night than someone else took his place, pressing in close to her.

“Hello, Katniss,” a low voice purred into her ear, the sibilants of her name slinking and slithering down her spine, dragging the temperature in the room down by a cool ten degrees.

She’d know that voice anywhere, the presumptuous intimacy of it and its smirking, arrogant tone. Shuddering, she suppressed the urge to cast a jinx at the speaker sealing his damn tongue to the roof of his mouth.

 _Langlock_ she thought, but instead muttered, “Hello, Finnick.” She kept her eyes trained straight ahead, hoping he’d take the hint and piss off. (Which was about as likely, she reasoned, as a centaur wearing pants to cover up his massive dong. After all, the bigger the dick, the prouder most creatures were of that fact).

Finnick slid his empty glass onto the bar and, like some kind of fucking barbarian, rapped it loudly on the wooden surface to catch the bartender’s attention. Katniss cast a sidelong glance at him, checking for cloven hooves or scales. None—at least as far as she could tell. And he wasn’t clothed in shaggy animal pelts either, drinking ale out a battered tin stein, beer foam clinging to an overgrown beard in long, stringy clumps.

“Pity a Balrog hasn’t eaten you yet,” she observed, saying it to the bottles of scotch that happened to be lining the bar shelf at her eye level instead of to the would-be Balrog bait sitting next to her.

He laughed, his hot beer breath fanning across her face. “Lucky for me those are Muggle nonsense, eh. Although it’s funny you mention it, because I was in South America a couple months back tracking a Rhodesian Rodtail, and I almost got devoured by a pack of the most foul-tempered—” Someone behind him coughed loudly, interrupting what was destined to be another one of his insufferable stories that would end, as Finnick’s stories _always_ ended, with him balls-deep in a random orifice of an even more random witch. In her peripheral vision it looked an awful lot like he was trying to conceal a smirk behind his hand. “So anyway…” he continued casually, “can I interest you in a drink?”

“Nope,” she said, her lips popping with satisfaction on the letter _p_. “Already got one.” She took a swig of her butterbeer to stress the point.

“Well, how’s about we head upstairs and have a bite to eat, then?” His smirk deepened, and Katniss jolted in her chair when his elbow made contact with her ribs. “Perhaps you’d like to grab a nice, big, hot meat pie?”

She rolled her eyes at the innuendo. “And here I was, thinking you only offered women spotted dick.”

Finnick snorted. “You’re always good for a laugh, Everdeen, you know that? C’mon,” he said, sounding almost… earnest. “Let’s find a place a little quieter so we can chat for a while.” He shot a look over his shoulder and, for some reason, shrugged. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost say he looked helpless.

“From the man who puts the ‘herpes’ in ‘herpetology’? I’ll pass.”

It was the laugh that rumbled from the person standing behind them that finally got her to look. The sound of it was like the waters at the bottom of the ocean, shifting, sifting, slipping over unchartered depths she didn’t even know she had inside herself. She turned her head, her gaze passing directly over the bronze-haired devil beside her to the man standing behind him.

And saw that Peeta Mellark was there— _right the fuck there_ —a couple feet from her. He was laughing, just like he had been the first time she ever laid eyes on him.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly at a loss for words. He was here with _Finnick Odair_? Up in the balcony Finnick’s back had been facing her, so she hadn’t seen who Peeta’s companion was, but she’d never considered that he was the sort of person who’d be friends with the wizarding world’s record holder for largest douchebag per volume. “I... ah...” She swallowed, searching for something, _anything_ , to say, trying to work past the disappointment of that—and of knowing he was only there now to play wingman for Finnick’s half-assed pick up attempt. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”

Even though she stood no chance with Peeta—none at all—and even though that might have been for the best, she had to admit he looked better up close than she could have imagined. She wanted to eyefuck him into tomorrow, to pour over every inch of him in admiration, cell by glorious cell, inch by marvelous inch. He was perhaps only average height, but was still a good half a foot taller than she was, maybe more. He’d grown taller and broader since he was a student at Hogwarts, his frame filled out with muscles that only came with manhood. He looked like he could hoist her over his shoulder without a second thought or fuck her up against a wall (she’d settle for either). He stood there casually, his hands jammed in his coat pockets, but she knew that if she could see them they’d be broad and strong, his fingers thick and perfect for riding.

She crossed her legs at the thought and leant her left elbow on the bar for support, feeling intoxicated by the closeness of him.

Firewhisky had absolutely nothing on Peeta Mellark.

The guy was as exquisite as a painting, a harmonious blend of colours arranged by some inexplicable act of alchemy. His face was flushed pink from the heat of the room, his golden hair shot through with streaks of… something... green? And at this distance Peeta’s eyes were what she’d describe as storybook blue—the kind of colour she’d only read about—some mixture of airy clouds and brilliantly sparkling lochs, the surging rivers of Albion and the North Sea on a sunny day. All fiction, of course. From what she’d seen in real life, blue was nothing more than the grand, unrealised aspirations of grey. Where she grew up, in a rundown coastal town in Northumberland once known for its coal, blue was the colour of storms and stagnation, sewage and spindrifts. But the colour of Peeta’s eyes was so powerful it made her believe in the stories—in the fiction, the _mythology_ —of her homeland being a beautiful, warm place.

At her question, Peeta’s brows lifted in surprise, and it was only then she remembered she wasn’t supposed to know who he was. “I mean,” she amended. “I didn’t realize Finnick had any friends.”

“Well, c’mon, Katniss,” Finnick grinned coyly. “You know I have plenty of _friends_.”

“Friends you don’t fuck, ” she clarified, unable to look away from Peeta.

“Hey,” she heard Finnick protest, “who says we don’t—”

“All right, all right,” Peeta laughed, running a hand through his hair. “Ignore him,” he said, his face a brighter shade of pink than it had been only moments earlier. “He’s a prat.”

“And yet you’re friends with him,” she said, unable to stop herself. “What does that make you?”

“Oh—erm...” Peeta laughed and shifted his weight, a frown briefly flitting across his face. “Well, now that you mention it... I don’t actually know?”

He gave another half-laugh, a choked and desperate sound that died somewhere between his throat and his tongue, and then an awkward silence settled between them, heavy and stifling, conjuring in Katniss’ mind images of powder-wigged servants in a bygone era draping cloth covers over furniture, preparing it for a long season of disuse. Invisible, white-gloved hands smoothed the fabric down, smoothing it, smoothing it, smothering it, until there was no air left. It was hard to breathe under the weight of that silence.

Why did she have to be so difficult all the time, so hostile and rude? It wasn’t Peeta’s fault, after all, that she’d built up in her mind an impossible fantasy about who he was. He wasn’t the golden boy from school she’d made him out to be in her mind.

He was only a man.

And what did it matter _when_ he saw her for the piece of work she was? Whether it was an immediate bad impression or a bitter taste that accumulated gradually over time, a slow, eventual souring acquired bite by bite, it was inevitable.

He was only a man, and she was maybe a monster. Which still made him a great deal too good for her.

She’d decided to put them both out of their misery by excusing herself and escaping into the night to join the other abject creatures lurking in it when Finnick smoothly began to speak. “How rude of me… you two haven’t been properly introduced, have you?” He wiped his palms on his thighs, then pointed to Katniss.

“Peeta, this is Katniss Everdeen. Defence Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts and, more impressively, I think, the youngest auror to ever work for the Ministry of Magic.” He shot her a feline look, mischief—or was it malevolence? Katniss couldn’t be sure—sparkling in his Slytherin-green eyes. “Don’t worry, darling, I definitely won’t suggest you sucked any dicks to get the job. And this,” his finger lazily swung toward his friend, “is my oldest and best friend Peeta Mellark. Baker extraordinaire. No dick sucking required to secure either of those positions, although I suspect he’s well-versed in handling his own baguettes.”

The flush on Peeta’s face deepened to a violent shade of scarlet, the same exact colour as a stick of Brighton rock, and he dragged a hand through his hair, his fingers gripping the roots. “Blimey, Finnick,” he laughed uneasily. “That was even worse than I imagined.” He looked off in the distance for a moment, his eyes glazed with what looked an awful lot like shock, before he finally met Katniss’ gaze. “Despite that introduction it’s... ah... still a pleasure to meet you, Katniss.” He bit his lip and, after a moment of hesitation, held a hand out to her in greeting.

How oddly formal of him. Although, after the fuckery Finnick just unleashed, she could hardly blame the guy. She swiveled on the barstool to face him fully, but between the firewhisky pulsing in her blood and the influence of being near him, she swayed and lost her balance. Finnick clutched her arm to steady her—an uncharacteristically chivalrous moment for him—and as she pitched forward, her wand slipped out of her robe’s pocket and clattered to the ground, landing at Peeta’s feet.

“Oh, here. Let me get that for you,” Peeta said, stooping to retrieve it, just as Katniss slid off the stool and crouched to the ground to pick it up herself.

It happened too quickly to be sure who touched the wand first—whether it was his hand that had clutched it or hers—but as their hands wrapped around the wand, the inn trembled around them, the rafters groaning and floorboards moaning as the atmosphere in the inn pressed outward, each molecule of air desperate to escape.

...To escape the darkness that exploded into the room, enveloping it, choking out all the candles, snuffing out the roaring fire and every cherry red end from the pipes and cigars that had been lit only half a second before.

The blackness that erupted and seeped into the corners and pores of the inn swallowed all sound along with it. A deathly pall took over—the laughter and rumbling voices, the tinkling keys of the piano, the clinking of glasses… everything fell silent under the power of the conquering shade.

Then a voice began to rumble. It was as ancient and remote as the distant stars in the sky, but as familiar as her own reflection.

She had never heard such a voice before, and yet she _knew_ it—she had known that voice long before she’d taken her first gasping, squalling breath on this earth.

“ _Are you_ ,” the disembodied voice moaned lowly, its tone shaking her guts, rattling her lungs, robbing her of air, cleaving her heart into halves, “ _Are you coming to the tree?_ ”

And then it— _he_ —was gone.

The wind howled against the roof, or maybe it was the sound of his spirit fleeing into the storm, and then a woman began to scream from somewhere within the room.

The woman screamed until her voice was ragged and rent, until it felt like she’d heaved her insides onto the floor, and when she couldn’t take it anymore, Katniss covered her ears with both hands, the wood of her wand pressed to her skull—the wand that had once been her father’s. But she could still hear the woman—could _feel_ the woman—screaming.

A warm hand gripped her shoulder, shaking her, and that’s when Katniss opened her eyes.

And realized that _she_ had been the one screaming.

Blue eyes—storybook blue eyes—looked at her, desperate and confused.

“Are you all right?” Peeta’s mouth said, but she couldn’t hear the words.

All she could hear was _that_ voice, and the memory of it. It had torn her apart, the agony of hearing him.

“What dark magic was that?” she gasped, her senses returning to her one by one. Her voice was so hoarse she barely recognized it. She looked at the hand on her shoulder—the hand that had been on her wand, and lurched away from it, falling backwards onto her ass and scrambling, like a grotesque sea creature, away from it. Away from Peeta, who was kneeling on the floor before her. “What did you do?” she demanded. “What spell was that?”

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” he said, his face as pale as the grave. He looked at his hand, scouring the palm as though it was a text he could read and decipher, searching for an answer in it that only he could see.

What kind of sick joke was this? What sort of trick? Why would he do that to her—was she so awful, such a pathetic thing, that she deserved that?

Katniss could feel her hackles rising, the fire within her sparking and lurching and roaring to life.

“Don’t lie to me,” she said in a low voice, not caring that every eye in the inn was fixed on them—eyes so wide they were rimmed in white and faces so blanched that the people around them resembled specks in the snowstorm. “I heard him,” she said, hating that her voice broke, that Peeta would know how badly she ached and bled from whatever cruel trick had just been played.

“Who?” he whispered. “Who… did you hear?”

The sick fucker.

“My father,” she hissed, resisting the urge to throw something at Peeta, to hurt him in a way that would send her to the dankest, lowest, meanest cellars of Azkaban. “I heard my father.”

Peeta shook his head, his eyebrows knitted in confusion, like she’d spoken to him in parseltongue. She shot a glance at Finnick, who was standing now beside Peeta, looking equally confused.

Not parseltongue, then. Finnick, a snake himself, would have understood that.

“I heard my father,” she repeated, and then, like it explained everything, she shoved her wand toward Peeta. “This… this was his. And when you touched it… when we… I don’t know... I don’t know. He’s… he’s dead. And I heard him.”

He had been dead for many years. Murdered, his body left strung up in a tree, with “Muggle-loving filth” written in the dirt beneath what was left of his charred remains. Or so she had been told much later, when it was time for her to understand the depths of the dark world she lived in, one where some people would always hate mudbloods like her.

“I don’t—” Peeta shook his head, looking at her blankly, his lower lip trembling and eyes limned with tears as though _he_ was the one who was suffering. Who _had_ suffered.

“I heard Delly,” Finnick said, interrupting.

Katniss’ eyes shot toward him, her scowl deepening and stomach tightening. Inside of her a conflagration raged, ignited by the whiskey, fanned by her broken heart, and sustained by her ire. “Who?” she snapped.

“Delly Cartwright,” Finnick repeated, like the last name explained a single fucking thing.

“I heard her too,” Peeta rasped.

“Who. Is. Delly. Cartwright,” Katniss demanded through gritted teeth, dangerously close to combusting.

Peeta looked at her with his blue eyes, with those earnest blue eyes that looked sad, not cruel. “She was my wife.”

From behind her, Katniss heard someone stumble away, the door of the pub creaking open, and it reminded her that she didn’t have to stay for this… she could escape the prying eyes and curious, slack-jawed stares, the pity and the disdain of the patrons staring at her. She could escape Peeta and whatever dark magic had just taken place between them.

She bolted out into the night and saw Haymitch bent over, one hand resting on the timbered building as he retched and emptied his guts into the snow. The smell of his vomit hit her, and she staggered back, recoiling from it, desperate to escape the drunkard. Desperate to escape whatever it was that happened when she and Peeta held her wand, to escape whatever magic had conjured the voice of their beloved dead.

But she could still hear him. The man who’d held her high on his shoulders and had sung her soft lullabies. Who’d drawn bubbles out of thin air and set them adrift into the summer sky. Who taught her everything she knew about life and love—and loss.

She could still hear him, and so she fell to her knees, the waves of sick overtaking her, purging her of the pain she felt at losing him all over again.

Whatever she’d felt with Peeta tonight, it was too much—much more than any person could bear.

Maybe it was best to feel nothing at all.

She let the darkness and cold overwhelm her, thankful for the oblivion.


End file.
